Argentina is an outlier as their economy is in the dumps, for the rest of SA food is much cheaper than in Europe. But in general you are right that food prices in some countries in SA are artificially high because most of our food is exported, so the domestic market has to pay a premium. We also export the highest quality food. If we fed the domestic market first and exported the surplus food prices would be a fraction of what they are today.
I was in BA quite recently and didn't find it that expensive in restaurants, even in Recoleta. Inflation is so volatile there it can change by the week I guess. But if what you are saying is true about meat being so expensive, I think that just means that meat isn't going to be sold to Europe, because Europeans aren't going to pay that price and Argentinian meat producers aren't going to ship their produce to Europe and comply with all the red tape to get the same or lower prices. Granted, in some poorer areas where meat is currently quite cheap the effects of competition could be more acute.
I flew from Asia to Buenos Aries after on a whim deciding not to return home to the US. I ran out of USD a while ago. Everywhere in the world I can withdraw cash with a small fee and whatever the exchange rate is. In Argentina it was a $10 fee plus the government set exchange rate and max withdraw was 60,000 pesos. So I was paying $10 to get $60 worth of pesos.
I didn't know that, but it's possible because we still have a lot of weird exchange rules.
You can probably have got better exchange rates in some shady corner, if you don't mind the risk of been scamed by a random guy instead of the bank/goverment.
